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sire to share the secrets that had made her beautiful.
Now her “magical” products were revealed as bogus,
and she was exposed as a con artist. “Madame Yale’s
marvelous preparations have been declared mar-
velous humbugs,” said the 1910 edition of the Med-
ico-pharmaceutical Critic and Guide.
Soon Madame Yale dropped into obscurity, and
may have reassumed the surname, Mayberg, that
she’d shed when founding her company. Despite
her two decades of fame, newspapers (which no
longer benefi ted from her advertisements) seemed
to forget about her. Today there is precious little
scholarship about her, as I found in my futile search
for information about her early life and later years.
Given how hard she worked to craft the character of
Madame Yale, I suspect she might be disappointedto learn that she is no longer remembered as a his-
toric beauty, the way she herself once remembered
Helen of Troy.
It’s tempting to think of Madame Yale as either a
wellness visionary ahead of her time or a scam artist;
in reality, she was both. She recognized that beautiful
women are treated better than their ordinary-look-
ing counterparts, and she gave women a nobler way
to frame their pursuit of beauty. She saw an hour-
glass-shaped hole in the marketplace and strode
boldly through it. I can’t help but admire Yale, Paltrow
and Bosworth for their insight and their hustle, and
I’ll even admit to making a pur-
chase or two at the Goop on-
line store. It’s hard to resist the
allure of a beautiful woman
telling me I can look and feel
like her if I just click here.1849-
OTC NARCOTIC
It’s estimated that thousands
of children died after taking
this morphine-laden syrup.
It wasn’t removed from
shelves until 1930.1807-
HEALTHY PROFIT
Thomas W. Dyott
was the nation’s fi rst
patent-medicine baron.
In three decades he
amassed a quarter-
million-dollar fortune
from the sale of his
elixirs and lozenges.1899
PRINTING MONEY
The mogul F.J. Cheney
estimated that news-
papers carrying ads for
patent medicines, includ-
ing his, made some $
million annually. In 1911,
the government accused
him of “misbranding”
products.Tonic Boom
PATENT MEDICINES BECAME BIG BUSINESS IN
THE 19TH CENTURY. SOME WERE BUNK. SOME
WERE EFFECTIVE. SOME ARE STILL AROUND
By Ted Scheinman1862
REGULAR INCOME
Benjamin Bran-
dreth spent around
$100,000 annually
advertising his Vege-
table Universal Pills,
marketed primarily as
laxatives; from 1862
to 1883, his gross
income surpassed
$600,000 a year.BYLINESEmmeline Clein is a writer based in Brooklyn.
She is currently pursuing a graduate degree at
Columbia University.1875
LONG LASTING
Lydia E. Pinkham intro-
duced her Vegetable
Compound, made with
root and seed extracts
and alcohol, for “female
complaints.” A version
of the herbal tonic is
still produced today by
Numark Brands.